MORE THAN MEMORY, REASON, AND SKILL: PRAYER C AND THE IMAGE OF GOD
Henri Nouwen and Adam Arnett. Adam was diagnosed with developmental disabilities and epilepsy. Nouwen's book "Adam: God's Beloved" chronicles his life. Public domain.
Eucharistic Prayer C is the perfect prayer to hate for many Episcopalians. There are several criticisms of it, including that it’s dated, patriarchal, and campy, among others. Its description of our home planet as “this fragile Earth, our island home” is easy to lampoon, and I have at times heard it referred to both as the “Star Wars Prayer” and “the liturgical equivalent of a leisure suit.” But one criticism that I haven’t heard a lot of people voice is, in my opinion, the most glaring issue of them all: its theological anthropology.
Theological anthropology is the study of what it means to be a human being made by God. It is how we think through the creator-creation relationship, and it’s the way we understand ourselves. It’s one of those foundational concepts that underlies a lot of other things that we talk about theologically, but which (like many foundations) often lies unexamined.
How would you define what it means to be a human, made by God? Perhaps the most popular answer goes back to Genesis 1:26-27:
Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
The translation here is the NRSV, but it doesn’t much matter which one you use; in Christian thought, our theological anthropology almost always starts with the concept found here of the imago Dei, the image of God. Humans (and no other part of creation) were created in the image of God, according to the divine likeness. In some way that is not fully explained here, humanity is some small, imperfect reflection of God.
But note the lack of specificity: we aren’t told what it is about humans that shows that they’re in the image, or after the likeness, of God. So this is a question that the Christian tradition has struggled to pin down over the years. We want to identify exactly what it is about us that the imago Dei is. We want to be specific about what it is that separates us from the rest of creation. And so, over the years, there have been attempts to define it.
Before going on, it is worth pausing to ask: what do you think defines the imago Dei? In what part of us humans can the image of God be found? For a great many Christians, the answer has to do with the human capacity for rationality, conscious thought, or some similar cognitive ability that separates us from the animals. The perfect illustration of this can be found in Eucharistic Prayer C, which contains a salvation narrative that goes all the way back to creation: “From the primal elements you brought forth the human race,” it proclaims, “and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.” (1)
While Prayer C doesn’t explicitly state that “memory, reason, and skill” is meant to define the image of God, it’s made clear from the context. Before this turn of phrase come the primal elements, and immediately afterwards humans are named the rulers of creation, before betraying God’s trust and turning on one another. The primal elements out of which humanity is created are assuredly from Genesis 1, and being named rulers of creation is part of the same passage (Gen 1:26-27) where the imago Dei is referenced. The betrayal of God’s trust and turning on one another refers to eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 3. “Memory, reason, and skill,” is not a random phrase interjected randomly in the prayer; it’s a modern attempt at restating what it means to be made in the image of God. That’s wonderful if it’s right. But what if it’s wrong?
Such a definition for the imago Dei is a prevalent one. It can be found, in its nascent form, in the thought of Augustine, but is advanced most convincingly in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (see ST, 1.93). Aquinas is a popular theologian, and such a conception of our humanity, our inherent value as creatures of God, has only become more attractive in the time since the Enlightenment.
But it isn’t the only definition the church has had. Other theologians throughout the centuries have defined the imago Dei in a variety of ways. They’ve thought of it as our special relationship to the Creator, even foreshadowing the covenant relationship with Israel; (2) the human capacity for religion; (3) the human capacity for infinitude through plasticity; (4) the “ecstatic impulse” or urge to connect to others, a shadow of the trinitarian life found in our need for community; (5) or even as nothing inherent in humanity but rather as a continuing act on God’s part of establishing relationship with us. (6) So it’s not as if “memory, reason, and skill” constitute the only possible definition of the imago Dei.
What’s more, some theologians have raised some significant objections to defining the image of God as some sort of rationality or capacity. Particularly helpful is the work of John Swinton, whose book Dementia: Living in the Memories of God raises the key problem with defining humanity in terms of capacity or ability: inevitably someone is left out. This is already a significant problem in (particularly Western) society. If you doubt me, think of the family member of a dementia sufferer who says something to the effect of, “My loved one isn’t there anymore.” Similar things are said about anyone suffering from mental illness, and we tend to define those with disabilities in terms of deficiency or lack. The world already wants to tell us that human identity is tied up in rationality and memory. Is it good for the church to essentially baptize such an idea by defining the image of God in such terms? What does it mean for a worshiping community affected by dementia, or mental illness, or any other kind of disability – and every worshiping community is touched by these in some way – to hear every Sunday, in their heavenly worship, that some of the members of their church lack what we are saying it means to be created in the image of God?
Or, considered from another angle, what is gained in the specificity? Part of the beauty of the Book of Common Prayer is that it allows for theological latitude around nonessential points of doctrine. We needn’t have a singular understanding of salvation, or Eucharist, or the sacrifice of Christ in order to pray the prayers of the BCP, because the phrasing tactfully avoids taking firm and inarguable stances on such matters. In that vein, what would be lost by a less specific (and less potentially harmful) turn of phrase instead of “memory, reason, and skill” in Prayer C? Couldn’t we achieve the same end by something more ambiguous such as, “From the primal elements you brought forth the human race and blessed us to bear your image in the world.”?
I know it is a popular position in the Episcopal Church to hate Prayer C, but the truth is that I love it. This was the prayer that my wife and I used at our wedding, and I continue to think that “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only and not for strength; for pardon only and not for renewal,” is one of the finest phrases of prayer in the entire 1979 BCP. But I cannot in good conscience use it in any congregation. Every congregation has experience with dementia, mental illness, or disability. And I’m sure just about everyone has, like me, heard someone say that their relative with dementia “wasn’t in there anymore.” Or heard someone with a mental illness compared to an animal. Or heard autism or disability spoken about only as some vast and unimaginable tragedy.
Our society makes it clear to anyone with dementia, mental illness, or disability everyday that their very humanity is in question. How much worse must it be to come to church and hear that some in the church think you no longer bear the image of God? Given the chance to refute this corrosive message, in Prayer C we decide to reinforce it instead. That is a tragedy of the highest order – and an entirely avoidable one, to boot. All it would take to have Prayer C instead affirm our common dignity and status as bearers of the image of God would be to let go of one flawed definition, and four little words. We are so, so much more than memory, reason, and skill.
The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 370.
James Luther Mays, “The Self in the Psalms and the Image of God,” in God and Human Dignity, ed. R. Kendall Soulen and Linda Woodhead (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 27-43.
Celia Deane-Drummond, “In God’s Image and Likeness: From Reason to Revelation in Humans and Other Animals,” in Questioning the Human: Perspectives on Theological Anthropology for the 21st Century, ed. Lieven Boeve, Yves De Maeseneer & Ellen Van Stichel (New York: Fordham, 2014), 60-75.
Kathryn Tanner, Christ the Key (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 53.
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 50-2.
Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Creation, vol. 3, pt. 1 of Church Dogmatics, trans. J. W. Edwards, O. Bussey, and H. Knight, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Thomas E. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958), 183-5.
